If you're planning on using Spring with Hibernate, Data Access with the Spring Framework is a must read. This article makes it look easy (and simpler) to use Spring's Hibernate helper classes than the regular Hibernate API. Good stuff - this kind of stuff makes integrating Spring into AppFuse look like fun. Deleting code is always fun. I wonder if MyEclipse will roll in some support for the Spring Framework? What about IDEA? Yeah, I broke down and bought a copy. I could use some "get to know your IDE" tutorials though. One thing I learned from Open Source Programming (and originally from The Pragmatic Programmer) is get to know your IDE. I could certainly use some more expertise on Eclipse and IDEA. I'm going to buy MyEclipse, a good Eclipse book and go read some IDEA documentation. Ambitious plans right before bed - sure sounds good though. Links appreciated - I want to make my IDE-life easier.
Download or read the Release Notes. You know what bugs me about this release? The release notes suck! There's no changelog - what bugs got fixed, which ones didn't? Any new features? I suppose I could go crawling around their bug tracker and find out, but isn't this the kind of information you'd like to see with the release? Should I upgrade? Why should I upgrade - is something broke in 5.0.16 that's fixed in 5.0.18? Are there memory leaks that got fixed?
The only reason I develop on 4.1.29 these days is because my Remember Me feature works on 4.1.x, but not on 5.0.x. I could make it work on 5.0.x, but it wouldn't be as secure. I hope to implement Charles' recommended cookie strategy and then go for 5.0.x as my development platform, but that'll be a few more days.
On another note, I've implemented the Tomcat Ant tasks in AppFuse and I must say, these things are nice. The main advantage is speed, which all developers love.
One of the tips I picked up in J2EE Design and Development was to turn off automatic session-creation in your JSPs. So I tried this today on my project, and it doesn't seem to work. Basically this involved putting the following at the top of your JSPs:
<%@ page session="false"%>
I did this by adding this to my taglibs.jsp, which is included in every other JSP - so it should affect all my JSPs and prevent a session from being created on my welcome-file - right? Not according to Tomcat's Manager application - it still increments the number of sessions as I hit the welcome page with different browsers. Am I doing something wrong?
I'd love to get this working - so sessions are only created when a user logs in. Those JSPs that need a session, I'll override the default with session="true". I often see a whole bunch of sessions on the wiki and roller apps on this site - and in reality - a session should never be created, unless I login. At least I think that's how this is designed to work...
Richard seems to think that most open source developers are like starving artists:
While a few make really good money selling consulting and training and other services, the vast majority of open source developers don't make anything.
For some reason, I don't believe this. The open source projects I participate in, as well as the ones I admire and use - all seem to have developers that are gainfully employed and making money. Of course, this may just be a Java open source phenomenon.
To do open source, you have to have a day job. You can't expect open source to feed your family or even your cat for that matter. As I said there are exceptions, but most open source developers do it for the love of writing software. While commercial software developers do a great job of feeding their families, open source developers do a better job of feeding their minds. In the end, you have to ask yourself which is more important: The things you own or freedoms you have.
Very good points. I dig working on AppFuse, as well as Roller, Struts Menu, and the Display Tag because I can do whatever I want. I can implement silly features like Clickstream and I don't have to ask anyone if it's a good idea (I'm still debating this).
Back to my point though. I firmly believe that most Java Open Source Developers are gainfully employed and not starving artists. Part of this comes from the fact that most of the big projects I work with (i.e. Struts and Hibernate) have some smart folks on staff, and the popularity of their projects has provided them with more opportunity, hence they're employed.
Personally, I do open source because I want to learn. I want to write code that gets scrutinized by the masses. As an independent consultant, I rarely get another person looking at my code - so I turn to the community by opening my code (that I use on a daily basis) to other developers. Overall, having others look at my code has resulted in much higher quality software for my clients, and has helped me learn a lot in the process as well.
I also look at open source development as a good marketing campaign - here's what I can do, hire me. This has proved very successful so far. Hence, my formula: Open Source Development = good marketing = gainful employment.
